Talented launches specialised agency 'The New Thing’

Staffed entirely by creators, the agency’s primary focus for their brands will be to help them create cultural conversations and moments on social - something they believe very few brands are getting right.

Gautam Reghunath and PG Aditiya’s indie agency, Talented, today announced the launch of a new specialised social and culture marketing agency, ‘The New Thing’. Viren Noronha who previously led the social charter at Swiggy and Tinder joins as co-founder of the new entrepreneur-operated creative shop.

Staffed entirely by creators, the agency’s primary focus for their brands will be to help them create cultural conversations and moments on social - something they believe very few brands are getting right.

On the launch of the new venture, co-founder, Viren Noronha said, “Getting social right is hard. And, the way agencies and brands look at it needs a desperate refresh. My experience at Swiggy and Tinder showed me evidence of a crucial shift - it’s not about what your brand is saying, it’s about what people are saying about your brand. To keep yourself relevant you need to lean into those conversations. You need to contribute to internet culture with your content. And, you need creators who do that for themselves every day, as part of your team. 

Look at some of India’s most popular campaigns over the last few years - It’s not that people hate advertising, they just hate boring ads. Great advertising or social doesn’t force your audience to talk about you, it invites them to. And it certainly doesn’t need ‘30 posts a month’ to do that. The New Thing wants to help brands be in charge of those conversations, whether it’s ‘daily social’ or ‘spike campaigns’. We want to make brands work for the internet, not the other way around. I’m now excited to begin with colleagues and partners who, like me, believe that social done right is a growth function, not a cost centre.” 

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Talented’s founders, Gautam Reghunath and PG Aditiya had this to say on their new agency, “Viren has executed some of the most talked about social-first campaigns in India but we think he’s been masquerading as a brand-side marketer and an agency-side creative these last few years. Now in his avatar as a creative entrepreneur, we simply want to liberate him and his founding team and help them launch the social and culture agency of their dreams.

There’s a clear reason why we’re launching this as a separate agency. Right from the kind of talent needed to workflow and processes, it’s become evidently clear that specialised social-first creative mandates for brands have to be run very differently from wider creative mandates. It’s equally exciting to see what an agency staffed and run entirely by creators looks like. It gives our clients a direct line to people who are shaping internet culture. All of this means we now believe we have a disruptive take on the business behind social-first creativity.” 

On Talented’s future ambitions, the founders added, “This model is how we currently envision scaling Talented and our brand - by enabling creative entrepreneurs their own platform to build from, instead of assuming we can simply incubate a new practice internally by ourselves. At the core of our new ‘Talented grid of agencies’ will sit Talented itself - an ideas shop, a medium-agnostic creative agency staffed by the brightest creative talent in the market.

Specialised agencies like The New Thing and potentially others in the future will be organised under and report into Talented - therefore having the ability to tap into this grid of shared services, while continuing to run as independent shops with their own unique personalities and specialisation. So, if you’ve got a disruptive new take on creative-adjacent businesses and want to begin, text us!” 

On the agency’s name, Noronha added, “Funnily, The New Thing is both the company’s name and the heart of its business model. The name holds us accountable to our own definition of disruption - to do things so different that it destroys the old methods. To brands, it offers instant clarity on who we are - a shorthand that communicates that we’re not shy about keeping up with trends and how the internet is moving. So, our clients shouldn’t be either. The New Thing is going to change how social media can work for brands in India.”